12/18/12

Legality is Irrelevent In Michigan Lawmaking

By Peter Luke/Bridge Magazine correspondent
Gov. Rick Snyder and Republican lawmakers are aiming to funnel
reaction to what has been an extraordinary two years of controversial
legislation onto the partisan section of the 2014 general election
ballot. How negative the reaction is will determine the shelf life of
the pro-business agenda they’ve spent two years enacting.
The 96th Michigan Legislature is hardly the first to ram through
bills without public hearing on deadline well into the bleary early
morning hours. Transparency is not the forte of the place. After all,
this is a body that exempts itself and its 148 members from the Freedom
of Information Act. Neither does the Open Meetings Act apply during
closed-door sessions where the real work gets done — caucus meetings and
workgroups of legislators, staff and lobbyists.
In the past, however, the sausage making has proven to be popular
(Proposal A) or not as unpopular as expected (the 2007 budget deal that
raised income taxes). Not too many homeowners complain that one of the
most consequential tax cuts in Michigan history –the 1994 voter-approved
inflation cap on property taxes — was created in the form of an
amendment offered at the last minute without public hearing near the
conclusion of days of round-the-clock legislating.
It’s different this time. Business owners should be happy that an
agenda they’ve long dreamed of has been enacted on the premise that it
will remake the economy. But unlike past “game-changers,” this one
creates real identifiable losers Republicans have relied on in the past
for gubernatorial year success: seniors, union households or both.
After slashing property taxes for homeowners in 1993, Gov. John
Engler’s first post-primary stop the following year was to a Chrysler
plant where he was cheered by United Auto Workers members. It was the
first of many factory visits that year. Hard to imagine Snyder following
a similar itinerary less than 20 months from now.
The rationale for Right to Work and the 2011 business tax overhaul is
that, after a decade of steep job losses, Michigan had to remake its
reputation, if it is to attract new businesses to replace the ones that
have folded or shrunk in size.
The tax overhaul, which included a new Corporate Income Tax, doesn’t
seem to have impressed the business climate ranking folks. But the tax
plan’s cost to retirees, through higher income taxes, delayed past the
November election as filings for the 2012 tax year aren’t due until
April 15, will be clear by the time Snyder, the House and Senate are all
up for re-election in 2014. By then, seniors, having already paid out
hundreds in higher taxes over two years, will know what Democratic
critics were talking about way back in the fall of 2012.

The many facets of Right to Work

Right to Work legislation has an effective date in late March. But it
won’t actually have an impact in unionized workplaces until after
current collective bargaining agreements expire or are renewed. In the
private sector, the United Auto Workers’ national contract with General
Motors, Ford and Chrysler runs through 2015.
In the public sector, the Michigan Civil Service Commission sets the
rules regarding the state government’s 35,000 unionized workers, not the
Legislature. Attorney General Bill Schuette and lawmakers say the
board’s Democratic majority should comply with the law anyway. That’s
not going to happen, unless the Michigan Supreme Court orders the
commission to do so. Police and fire employees, by far the majority of
municipal workers represented in bargaining units, are exempt from the
law.
Most interesting is what happens in school districts across Michigan
in the coming three months before the legislation takes effect. Expect
the Michigan Education Association and the Michigan chapter of the
American Federation of Teachers to seek years-long extensions of
existing contracts before Right to Work kicks in. Expect school boards
and administrators to extract concessions on work rules and economics in
return.
For this agenda to be a political success for Republicans, the
economy will have improve significantly. Voters will then have to
conclude that the state GOP’s agenda, and not national factors that
benefited President Obama last month, was critical to achieving gains in
job growth and personal income. And even then, the benefits will have
to be seen as worth the cost to pocketbooks and Michigan’s cultural
identity.

Pols erect personal protection

That Republicans themselves harbor doubts about the popularity of
what they’ve passed this month is evidenced by the limits they’ve placed
on challenging it.
Legislation making it more difficult to recall public officials was
rushed through on the same week that Republicans jammed through bills
liable to spark recall efforts.
Making it harder to recall legislators for the votes they’ve cast
isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you consider such efforts to be
punitive, distracting and, for the most part, unproductive. The
multi-bill package essentially makes recall efforts very difficult by
winnowing the time frame that recall drives can be mounted and
completed. It leaves it to the appellate courts — after a partisan Board
of State Canvassers predictably deadlocks 2-2 — to ultimately determine
when a recall signature drive can even begin.
Democrats called it an abuse of power, a self-grant of immunity
rooted in cowardice to shield Republicans from the electoral
consequences of their voting behavior. Not really. There are already
scheduled elections in 2014 and every lawmaker who voted to raise taxes
on seniors or allow workers to skate on paying union fees will be on the
ballot in August and November. Whether Republicans indeed are immune
will depend on the political competence of their opponents.
At least the move is constitutional. Republicans are now addicted to
the cynical habit of making the Michigan Constitution as malleable as
House of Representatives rules. The Right to Work bills contain $1
million appropriations to, according to the bill language, respond to
public inquiries and make information available to employers and
employees about the change. Now that’s “value-for-money” budgeting. It
also blocks the public from the opportunity to vote on the measure
themselves.
Inserting fewer than 100 words of appropriations language in bills
originally referred to the Senate Committee on Economic Development and
the House Commerce Committee apparently makes them appropriations bills.
The framers of Michigan’s 1963 Constitution re-committed to giving
Michigan’s citizens the right to put statutes approved by the
Legislature on the general election ballot for voters to either endorse
or reject. But they logically exempted from challenge budget bills that
contain the legal authority to run state government.
Given the stakes on Right to Work, the Michigan Supreme Court will be
given another chance to play referee and throw a flag on constitutional
violations that Snyder, who endorsed it with his signature, says is now
“normal” legislative procedure. Or a partisan majority of justices will
play legislator, but at twice the salary, and, once again, endorse the
practice as well.
Which means that in exchange for “freedom to work,” you’ve given up your full freedom to vote.Peter Luke was a Lansing correspondent for Booth Newspapers for
nearly 25 years, writing a weekly column for most of that time with a
concentration on budget, tax and economic development policy issues. He
is a graduate of Central Michigan University.

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.Benjamin FranklinOne has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.Martin Luther King

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."Abraham Lincoln

“If tyranny and oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”James Madison